A research-level community of mathematicians developed in the United States in the closing quarter of the nineteenth century. Since that time, American mathematicians have regularly paused to assess the state of their community and to reflect on its mathematical output. This paper analyzes a series of such reflections--beginning with Simon Newcomb's thoughts on the state of the exact sciences in America in 1874 and culminating with the 1988 commentaries on the ``problems of mathematics" discussed at Princeton's bicentennial celebrations in 1946--against a backdrop of broader historical trends.

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Clare Archibald, American Mathematical Society semicentennial
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[16]Gary
G. Cochell, The early history of the Cornell mathematics
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Karen Hunger Parshall, Entering the International Arena: E. H. Moore, the University of Chicago, and Hilbert's Grundlagen der Geometrie, in Proceedings of the Fourth International Galdeano Symposium: June 1999, ed. Elena Ausejo and Mariano Hormigón, to appear.

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Gary G. Cochell, The Early History of the Cornell Mathematics Department: A Case Study in the Emergence of the American Mathematical Research Community, Historia Mathematica 25 (1998), 133-153. MR 99e:01032

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Daniel Gorenstein, The Classification of the Finite Simple Groups. A Personal Journey: The Early Years, in A Century of Mathematics in America--Part I, ed. Peter L. Duren et al., Providence: American Mathematical Society, 1988, pp. 447-476. MR 90g:01031

George William Hill, On the Part of the Motion of the Lunar Perigee Which Is a Function of the Mean Motions of the Sun and Moon, Acta Mathematica 8 (1886), 1-36 (this work was initially published and distributed privately in 1877).

Karen Hunger Parshall, America's First School of Mathematical Research: James Joseph Sylvester at the Johns Hopkins University 1876-1883, Archive for History of Exact Sciences 38 (1988), 153-196. MR 89f:01039

Karen Hunger Parshall, Entering the International Arena: E. H. Moore, the University of Chicago, and Hilbert's Grundlagen der Geometrie, in Proceedings of the Fourth International Galdeano Symposium: June 1999, ed. Elena Ausejo and Mariano Hormigón, to appear.

Benjamin Peirce, Linear Associative Algebra with Notes and Addenda by C. S. Peirce, Son of the Author, American Journal of Mathematics 4 (1881), 97-229 (this was originally published and distributed privately in 1870).